African Wikipedian Alliance/Community processes

African Wikipedian Alliance

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How We Work on Wikipedia

Here are the processes we have set in place to ensure our programmes are well defined and produce desired results

How do people connect to the topic themes?

Africa Wikipedian Alliance (AWA) tackles key topical development challenges such as climate change, gender inequality, and health emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. We target issues that shape real lives and resonate best with audiences. We can go deeper and wider on an issue for longer to ensure sustained engagement and measurable impact. Our Wikipedia campaigns target specific development issues. We work with field experts and Wikipedians passionate about solving these issues to execute the campaigns through editing and correcting mis/disinformation and closing information/knowledge gaps on Wikipedia.

How do we run wikipedia campaigns?

Africa Wikipedian Alliance creates a Meta page on Wikipedia to launch a campaign. The Meta page provides specifics about the project/campaign, such as name and duration, application link for volunteers/contributors, the list of selected WiRs/fellows, and the project team. AWA shares the meta page widely within the Wikipedian groups to inform the community about the campaign and to call for volunteers.

How do we recruit WiR fellows and volunteers?

AWA creates a public call for applications with a sign-up form, inviting WiRs to participate in a campaign. The call for applications is advertised online and shared on the campaign's meta page/outreach dashboard, Code for Africa's website and social media accounts, and within African Wikipedians groups. We clearly outline the fellowship/volunteering details and requirements, including the grant disclosure (if provided). We include an office hour (Once or twice every month to solve challenges faced by volunteers (it is optional for volunteers to join, but we ensure our team is available for the duration set, i.e. an hour). In addition, we ensure that both WiRs and volunteers are actively engaged and integrated with the wider Wikimedia community, including actively engaging on their personal talk pages and other Wikimedia feedback tools.

How do we plan our work?

AWA employs a ‘Workflow’ approach to help WiRs and contributors systematically identify the most efficient means of generating consistent and optimum results when working on campaigns. Some of the quality assessment tools we use are:

1. Outreach Dashboard - Monitors or track matrix
2. Global Account Information - Tool for checking the background of a user
3. Page View Tool - Used for analysing the number of views on the page and compare pages in terms of views
4. Userviews Analysis Tool - Used for analysing user and the number of articles group
5. Massviews Analysis - Used for analysing massive views of wiki article
6. Citation Hunt Tool - Used for searching for articles that need citations
7. wikipedia:URLShortener - Used for shortening links for all wikimedia projects
8. Wikipedia Hashtag Tool - Used to track hashtags of campaign that is running eg #1lib1Ref

How do we conduct a peer review?

Code for Africa invites other contributors and editors to review our work.

What do we focus on when editing?

Africa Wikipedian Alliance Meta approaches includes:

1. Plug the holes: We identify information gaps around prioritised African topics (like democracy-related info + climate + health info) on English + French Wikipedia + WikiData, so that we can rally WiRs and volunteers to create appropriate content.
2. Expand indigenous content: We proactively help translate African content in international languages into African languages, to ensure users get info in their mother tongues.
3. Protect against vandalism: We proactively identify and correct misleading or deliberately planted content, including monitoring and documenting coordinated edits or other inauthentic activities targeting African political/climate/health topics.

     

Remaining visible in Wiki networks

Africa Wikipedian Alliance remains committed explicitly to tangibly helping build the wider Wikimedia community by:

1. Coordinating all our campaigns, recruitment, and activities with either local or thematic Wikimedia communities or chapters.
2. Co hosting all events, edit-a-thons and other convenings with Wikimedia or its appropriate chapter/affiliate.

How do we determine the impact of our programmes?

Africa Wikipedian Alliance measures impact using the following indicators:

1. Percentage increase in skills and knowledge of Wikipedians who attended our training and events.
2. Percentage reduction in mis/disinformation on Wikipedia.
3. Percentage increase in Wikipedian’s contribution to topical development issues through research, training,  information verification, fact-checking and content creation.
4. Percentage increase in the proportion of members (especially women) joining our Africa Wikipedian Alliance community.

What returns on investments do we get?

1. Achieving our programme’s mission and getting recognition for our contribution.
2. Having our members engage as trainers/speakers in our events.
3. Impact made in line with our work on different development issues.

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